Eric Berlow: How complexity leads to simplicity

[warewareno]

Don't get me wrong; I like the occasional perv video, but I'm just wondering why so many are related to this one.

[insomniacgrace]

Great topic to tackled on. Thanks for illustrating the tips and techniques for breaking down bigger issues into smaller ones. Indeed, he distilled an overwhelming information for the convenience of everyone.

[arekbee]

very good subject about visualization

[maggiemrust]

Great topic! But I want so much more -- there's nothing else on Youtube for Eric Berlow. TEDTalk needs to reprieve this talk and give him waaaaay more time!

[superdiza]

50% of this TedTalk is infomercials. Simple.

[Juggernaughty824]

hmm... still complex for me... can you simplify it?

[xjustamem0ryx]

take that algae and top predators graph and make it into a graph that relates/predicts the effect of one social/political/economic group to another inside a single country, state, city, house. it might illuminate some abstract illnesses.

[NeckPickup]

BULLSHIT

[gudnewss]

@NeckPickup goddddddd

[NeckPickup]

@gudnewss true

[alvisc2002]

uhh... so um... what's the freaking answer?!

i thought he was gonna say "ok so basically, all we have to do is kill bob over here and BOOM!! problem solved baby!!" :P

[Houses0nfire]

@alvisc2002 he can't give an answer because he hardly knows anything about/has control over the operation in Afghan, but his insight/methodology in approaching a given problem might help the people who do. His goal stated in the beginning was to "hope to convince you that complex doesn't always equal complicated", in other words, he wanted to give us common folks a tool to better make up our minds about what we see and hear. 3 minutes was all he needed!

[chengmeiling999]

way too short.................

[MrXanderPanda]

Great sweater.

[qigong1001]

There you go! The solution to the Afghan problem in three minutes...oh what...you didn't get it? No, neither did I. In fact, 3 minutes was too much of this. Without properly defining the problem (foreign imperialism) then you cannot solve the problem. Doesn't matter how complex or simple.

[alvisc2002]

@qigong1001 well normally i solve the yosemetie species problem with automatic weapons, alcohol, and lots and lots of uncontrolled firepower. i wonder if that same system would work in afghanistan.

[leonidasx666]

I think the trick is to do a graphic and then extrapolate... so, how do you do a graphic?

[alvisc2002]

@leonidasx666 by extrapolating it. Duh.  :P

[lassek85]

Still alot of work before unified science will poke its head out, but within ten years the world is ready (obv. in my crazed opinion) - he's obviously closing in on sociology (ex Zygmunt Bauman) and the connectivety described within todays society makes great examples.

[vfrederic]

Just seems like a variation of Occam's Razor

[MomoTheBellyDancer]

Thanks for not saying anything of substance. Geesh, what was the use of this?

[Adepthood]

Does anyone know how to create node graphs similar to the examples in this video? ie. what they're called, what program (he) used, etc..

[alvisc2002]

@Adepthood i think general Mcrystol probably asked the same thing lol.

We give it to the insurgents and it causes their heads to explode.

[TheJovanist]

1:40 Epic....... I should try that more often.

[pimpolinka69]

Mooar, I want moaaar!

[AlemanJuan]

i never noticed how neo-con ted was before... maybe my perspective has changed, but these are not the ideas of the future, these are remnants of the reactionary ideas of the 1800s.

[CandianBear]

the only problem with this is you need enough people with their capacities developed enough to see through the complexity and actualize the change- seems to me this is still a emerging talent. But with more and more people beginning to think in systems i'm hopeful we'll reach a tipping point and begin applying these insights in dealing with the complex problems facing society today...

[JPRubber2]

WOW!! totally awesome!!

[wodahsking]

What did he say?!?!?!

[popitypop]

@wodahsking he said something like: many complex diagrams/presentation may seem more complicated on the surface, but sometimes, the complexity actually make subjects or topics ezier to understad

[JosephW99]

hmmm, sounds complex

[EMan297007]

blackberry girl is so sweet

[matchbox555]

he said absolutely nothing

[romeoneverdies]

@matchbox555

actualy he said alot :-) you need to go deeper in your thinking

he said fair availibility of key services is the best way to gain support .

he said that if you "zoom out" you get a better picture . zoom out and you will get what i got witch is basicaly impliying things ... like military support is not realy necessary and the sphere of influance to get support is verry narrow .

[hede88]

@romeoneverdies Exactly.. Conclusion: Stop killing people and start SOLVING PROBLEMS... providing the basic necessities we ALL need.

War is big business, the war on terrorism is just the excuse. The World Trade Center was blown up (scientific fact), marxism/communism has never been tried but people of the West have been brainwashed that it is the worst of all evils.. Capitalism is the real cause of our problems since it is competition between people and holds us from coming together.

[CHAS1422]

Good topic, but too short

[arian50]

i have no fucking idea what he said......someone cut out half of his presentation.

[Th3Wab3]

give the man more time...

[innovant2003]

The real irony is that you can only diagram a complex system after the fact, in retrospect, never looking to the future.

[TheJovanist]

Here I will break it down in one sentence for you all.

"People in the big club will be able to get away with crime."

[SirTubelot]

A simple talk about a complex topic :-)

[werecow2003]

As much as I love TED, why does a topic as interesting as this get only <3 minutes time?

[ACANOFSODA]

@werecow2003 I know... How annoying. Haha, then you get a commercial that is almost the same length.

[MrSnowgum2]

@ACANOFSODA lol

[Pedraquebrota]

needed more time seriously!

[8DX]

Poor guy, could've given him a bit more time.. I mean come on TED!

[caseyforever]

I WANT MORE! .... uh, i mean NEED more to understand enough.

[t3tsuyaguy1]

@caseyforever I actually couldn't put it any better. That guy left me wanting to learn a lot more about his field.

[Saesegral]

What the shit? I have no idea what I just watched.

[gutspraygore]

Damn. Wish he had more time.

[lockitkitten]

So look at the big picture desifer the most relavent links to get your solution!

;) not to shabby

[danthemango]

A person talking about complex systems, and only has 3 and half minutes to make his point. To bad it's not long enough for him to make his point, it feels like half his presentation's missing.

In other news, half the video was a commercial. Ironic.

[freesk8]

He boils it down to two points, but the problem is that each of these points is much more complex than he suggests.

HOW do you engage with ethnic rivalries and religious beliefs? (HOW can we get them to stop hating each other, and HOW can we be credible when we are mostly not Muslims? We're infidels!)

And HOW do you get fair, transparent economic development? (Usually NOT by foreign aid that goes through governments. This usually enhances corruption.)

It's all harder than it seems.

[Wollff85]

@freesk8 It's still a whole lot easier than the original diagram suggests.

You are missing the point of the talk: I think everyone will agree that not every problem has simple solutions. The war in Afghanistan will not be solved easily.

What he showed was a good way to reduce the complexity of difficult problems and isolate the factors that matter, so that one may start thinking about the solutions. Instead of being tangled up in a diagram.

[HDvideosaregood]

MUST EAT BREAD.

[Khyrid]

Did you hear the classy music? That means if you buy this product you will be classy. 

[dermatu]

blackberry sucks ...

[HamOnCan]

@hwnzero looking from the insight out problematic for you? never cotton to those who went by rote in life, consequently due to brain injury life had me writ in a way it takes thinking to wrap your mind round the notes we share..

[furetosan]

Pretty cool.

[HamOnCan]

so true, and when you begin from the 'no matter our discipline, views. and any else, we are speaking of one and the same universe. . it is complex enough to hold all our individual truths as . . like an MRI scan of a certain as seen from their particular. . . how do we fit them all into the holographic nature of creation. do the stars fabricate the sound vibrations each plant picks up on in support of the many life forms spirited in matter. its the plants that air the breath of our being

[sukablianah2]

Go to 3:40 to see the actual commercial without wasting time on the video (thumb up)

[dragonstorm83]

oh, so that's why i'm so insightful :)

[DK0526]

delusional

[Wormtail81]

This is totally crazy. Is anyone actually taking this seriously???

[Wollff85]

@Wormtail81 What a great example of highly minded criticism. "This is totally crazy!", you say.

And nobody knows why.

It is fine if you want to give your opinion, but if you want people not to label you as an idiot, you should state the reasons why you hold them.

Did you never learn that in school?

[Wormtail81]

@Wollff85 I think it is silly that our government made what amounts to a food web with no variables relating any of the elements in it. Only laying out some kind of mathematical relationship among them would be worse. You cannot reduce a nation and its cultures down to a chart. To think otherwise is absurd. The entire thing has to be arbitrary on some level. I do appreciate that you saw some substance lurking behind my indignation. Look up Carl Menger and get back to me.

[Wormtail81]

The first 30 seconds of what this guy says reaffirm my belief that interventionism in the economy is a terrible idea.

[niginit]

So, complexity never leads to simplicity. Got it.

Thanks TED!

I'm learning by rejecting this talk as informative and insightful!

Is that how negative leads to positive? Hold on, I'll make a graph.....

[truthspeaker20]

Hey Lady try Android, much better than blackberry. Next time don't bother me when watching videos

[kommaV1023]

WTH! The real thing didnt even start!!

[jaspertine9]

Great talk... I suddenly feel like buying a Blackberry(tm) for some reason.

[ELDK2008]

It seems like the video was missing important details like:

1. what software is that and where is similar software available?

2. what if you don't have a complete data set

3. who puts in this complex data and organizes the relationships

4. are the nodes "weighted" ?

more.....details......please..­..but thanks for the introduction.

[racedaemon]

@ELDK2008 At 1:14 there is a logo saying "Microsoft Research", maybe it's a clue to the software used.

[ELDK2008]

@racedaemon - yeah....I just wish there was a little more but, thanks for that information.

[Tradd9]

I don't trust ecologists to predict anything. THEY ALWAYS GET THEIR STATISTICAL ANALYSES WRONG!!

[gulllars]

@Tradd9 your statement looses it's weight when you make big mistakes too, like a gross overgeneralization say "x always gets y wrong". Substitute always with often or most of the time, or something similar, and your stament carries more weight.

Regardless of ecologists skills of statistical analysis, the methodology he uses is valid and usefull. Applied mathematicians often use a similar method.

You need to expand your data set, and then filter it, to get to the simple relevant things you need.

[Tradd9]

@gulllars The first paragraph made no sense. The second and third paragraphs sound like someone trying to defend the validity of conclusions based on poor analysis. In summary, you've no idea what you're talking about.

[gulllars]

@Tradd9 the first paragraph critisized your overgeneralization of ecologists, and that being a weak basis for always distrusting them with prejudice.

The second paragraph is a statement saying the method is usefull (not how it is) and used by mathematicians, without expanding on it or deffending it.

The third paragraph summarizes to it being usefull to take a step back and look at the whole picture before deciding what points of it you want to look at.

[Tradd9]

@gulllars Once again, you are barely coherent. It isnt an overgeneralisation of ecologist to say that they get their stats wrong most of the time. This is a fact. It has been shown time and time again by statisticians for the past 50 years.

Its completely unclear what you mean by "the method".

And the fact that you have no idea what you're on about is evidenced by the statement "hey, lets take a look at the big picture". This is just a euphamism for "pfft, i know nothing about data analysis".

[gulllars]

@Tradd9 saying they are wrong most of the time is different from saying they are wrong all of the time. If you have data proving they are wrong most of the time, i won't fight that point. Disregarding ALL because MOST are wrong may work in daily life, but it means you may disregard someone that is right from time to time.

The method is, to expand the data set, identify relations within it, and then filter it for the parts relevant to your work on the data.

I've done this a bit in hobby projects.

[gulllars]

@Tradd9 to expand on my latest hobby project using a similar approach.

I've done benchmarking on Solid State Drives (SSDs) for a few years.

Recently i looked at performance scaling of SSDs by benchmarking in 6 dimensions (6 variables scaled according to eachother) and filtering a data set of over 10.000 data points pr configuration to find how scaling is influenced by the variables, and how this relates to the configurations.

[Tradd9]

@gulllars What the hell does this have to do with ecologists getting their statistics wrong!!! Knuckle-head!!

[pixelr0]

wow, ted! you suck

[Aresftfun]

I would of liked for it to be longer. (That's not what she said)

[madmax10101]

crap

[dswellhauser]

To short....wanted more....brilliant idea....but need more

[misterwipedown]

super crap!

[paulthecoolest]

I think I knew that already ..When I learn stuff..and really just know all of the details you finally get the gist of it..the stuff that really matters..

I think everybody already has that on an intuitive understanding

[SuperAtheist]

@GrudgyDiablo you knew simple solutions could be derived from complex diagrams before watching this video?

[AntiProtonBoy]

This video was 60% interesting, 40% rubbish. Can you guess the rubbish part?

[esaman]

"it is simple when you know how to find the core of the complexity and ignore everything else" Wow, what a genius.

[Mat2DaW]

big up to blackberry!

[GJudgemental]

So...Basically find what you're focusing on and point out the main factors? That's how I interpreted it.

[kinsmed]

The talk... I disagree with his assessment.

But...

good ad, Blackberry.

[RobertoWatchin]

what a gimp

[marrydruli]

I didn't get it

[smudge6699]

@marrydruli

He's essentially promoting intuition over cognition. waiting for answers to come over chasing an answer by asking, what is often, the wrong question(s) with your mind.

:-)

[Nielow100]

Sounds all good and well, BUT what did this guy actually explain? These nodes in his slide explained nothing by themselves. I did not learn anything. 'Look at the big picture' is nothing new, where is the idea?

[Kojak7snap]

@Nielow100 Mostly, it seemed to me a call to use visualization software to work with and in complexity, rather than around it. It would've been nice to hear A: what software he uses, and B: whether or not said software is open-source (I've no idea about either, sadly), but he definitely showed that complexity needn't frighten us away from a problem.

[TheSpankymonkey]

I liked the talk. Didn't like the advert at the end. :-)

[Ikhalis]

TED has had some crappy videos lately that seem to be fairly shallow talks based on basic subjects. Given those subjects are possibly important, it is really nice to see a talk about an "idea" or concept or way of thinking. Tragic that this guy only had 3 minutes to talk.  "Ideas worth spreading"

[DJGelbart]

That was awesome.

[LeonardLew]

What the fuck? A frame of the comercial as a Thumbnail? Seriosuly TED? If I was Eric Berlow I'd be pissed of at that.

[crankthetoto]

@LeonardLew lol

[farhmoha]

In order to simplify complexity one must graphically represent the information. After that is done you need to identify the factor you want to manipulate. Isolate this main factor and disregard the "noise".

[MrDeppness]

I liked this speech but only 3 minutes? it could have lasted at least 7 or 8 minutes.

[sausage4mash]

now if this was some women telling us we need to embrace our inner child we would have 25min TED , this vid was too short .

[Jeremias1111]

Interesting but much too short. He barely got the idea out.

[atypicalguy]

I just love how people use the SPAM function to hide comments they disagree with.

[quosmo1]

i havent seen this yet (still caching) but the title sounds like one of those horrible creationist arguments 'irreducible complexity' or some shit. lol : but my spider senses tell me tedtalks could not possibly stoop that low, so i will watch it in hopes that it isnt.

[dearestkranthi]

What happened to T of TED?

[AtheistdotEDU]

@dearestkranthi It's in the commercials.

[midgetsow]

Summary: If something is complex, that means theres more information to work with, and you can get easier answers by just looking at the broad picture. Whereas, if you have less information, you need to really work with that information to get answers, and that would be complexity.

Or something.

[Catend]

Interesting topic, sadly he just didn't go anywhere with it...

[sparrow111260]

@Catend

What? You serious?

[Catend]

@sparrow111260

about which part?

[sparrow111260]

@Catend

You said he didn't go anywhere with it.

I'm intrigued. Why would you say that?

He showed an exceptionally interesting chart and picker out some highly influential factors.

That looked like he "went somewhere" with it.

What specifically did you not like find wrong?

[Catend]

@sparrow111260

It felt like the first chapter out of a book that's all.  I'm not saying it's bad, I just want more I guess.

[sparrow111260]

@Catend

Fair enough.

[DorkyD4v1d]

1:54 If you start with an answer, you wouldnt need a question...

[Snowflake70]

I see far more advertising than anyone needs in a day which makes me feel sorry for anyone as they are probably everyone! E-fracking-nuff of the advertising ! People need jobs not some vision of what they cannot buy because they have no income. Mass mental depression serves no one. Get out of your office and into the real world. Go without clean clothes for a month and watch LIFE SUCKS for a better perspective. Prozac is not food.

[daffeybill]

zoom out, see a connection Afghanistan allege Jon Stewart now that is complex

[organicrobot]

This was interesting. I like the idea of helping people see complex things don't have to be 'scary.' Just dive right in! :)

[rhcpconor]

as regards to the ad: if she's such a hot shit photographer why is she using a blackberry camera? surly she can afford a proper camera.

[isambo400]

lets give the CRAZIES 5 min, and THIS GUY more time.

[lexsite]

TedTalks and Bullshit walks!

[KilluaXIII]

holy shit! that's hot

[atthetopofmyvoice]

Well, that was vague and unhelpful.

[freezingbeast]

Graph theory, interesting stuff. 

[Brandonduboff]

The subjective nature of what is complex and what is simple, stays the same. It is rather you that changes, due to your perspective. Complex things do not lead to simple, rather, there are more than one way of looking at a problem, and how you look at that problem. In political science, we call this a lens. It is used to look at a problem through certain frames of reference. The problems are neither complicated nor simple, rather they are problems. It is you that makes them one way or the other.

[Brandonduboff]

@Brandonduboff in essence, do not fall for his toying around with the idea of complicated and simple, understand the world is not black and white, and can be interpreted in any way, if one is simply looking for an interpretation, or in other words an opinion of how complicated it really is.

[tiefensucht]

A blackberry is really not that complex.

[Pianofy]

This is very true. Zoom out and simplify, or make it more abstract and simplify.

This is a technique that programmers use daily when creating a code architecture to work with.

[zigsauer]

What cannot be solved Can be Cut !

Gordian Knot

[kid29a]

Very simplistic talk :P felt like a trailer for the actual talk

[saadasim]

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was more informative.

[desemondez]

Would have loved more real life examples. Enjoyed the talk.

[Vormav666]

I want the rest... what was that? :/

[prabhatpalpal]

i liked the blackberry ad better!!

[sl2mmer]

um .. i didnt get it

[DackIsBack]

@sl2mmer It's simple, A baguette is complex... but a curry onion green olive poppy cheese bread is complicated.

[Brandonduboff]

@DackIsBack Its all as you think you see it, and not how it "actually is". They are not, "complicated" or "simple" rather you see them as that way. A slice of bread is not morally good, but you can interpret it as good, depending on your perspective. He uses words, which their meaning is mostly just an opinion. Is the glass half full or empty?

[DackIsBack]

@Brandonduboff I think you're playing off the curry onion green olive poppy cheese bread as an extraneous matter when it is of the utmost importance..

[Brandonduboff]

@DackIsBack I'm sorry. its the green olives. I can't take them. There too salty.

[tausenti]

as well as taking time with your decisions to way all the angles, leads to more good decisions then rushing and only looking at one or two angles gets you many more poor choices

[Darkaero199]

Don't get me wrong, but doesn't simplicity naturally lead to complexity? This should be titled how to pick out simple answers from a complex problem.

[SwimStretchRepeat]

Misleading title - this was a lead in for a 2 minute Blackberry commercial.

[kaminarigaston]

@SwimStretchRepeat

I'll complain when they put the commercial at the beginning.

[ORCA4312]

Lakes with fish have more mosquitoes? Why?

[comtraya101]

...half of this was an ad...but worth it

[xapemanx]

@comtraya101 lol the thumbnail was for this vid was of the ad

[jsskieracersoll]

Gotta love the 3min TED slots! This was great

[axxrulez]

wow i was just getting in to it,... it was so short ;C

[DoJaenin]

Where's the rest? This sounds like the first sentence of a 50 page paper.

[batfly]

Uhhh Ok... So Yeahh.